Chapter 1 Sudanese refugee populations also rose sharply in Libya (+198,400)28 and Uganda (+50,400). Operational data as of the end of May 2025 indicates that people have continued to flee, but at a lower overall rate than during 2024, although nearly 65,000 arrivals have been reported in Chad during May 2025.29 Rampant gang violence spread from the capital of Port-au-Prince to other parts of Haiti in 2024. As a consequence, the number of people displaced within the country tripled during the year, from 313,900 to over 1 million. The humanitarian situation in Haiti deteriorated rapidly as the year progressed, with the impact most acute on the protection situation of women and children.30 Almost half of Haiti’s 11.9 million civilians require humanitarian assistance and acute food insecurity affects more than 5 million people. The number of Haitian refugees and asylumseekers grew by 72,700 during the year to reach 423,300. Almost all of them were hosted by other countries in the Americas. Prolonged conflict between the Congolese army and multiple non-state armed groups in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has been characterised by continuous grave violations and human rights abuses against the civilian population, generating one of the world’s largest internal displacement crises. During 2024, several million people were repeatedly forced to flee violence perpetrated by all parties to the conflict, most notably in the regions of North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri. At end-2024, 7.4 million Congolese were forcibly displaced, with more than 8 in 10 of them remaining within their country. Many of those forced to flee have been displaced several times. In 2025, the conflict has escalated further, triggering repeated internal displacement. Close to 140,000 people had also fled the country by early May 2025, primarily to neighbouring Burundi and Uganda.31 The ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip in the State of Palestine has uprooted 90 per cent of the entire civilian population. Since October 2023, the majority of civilians in Gaza have been displaced multiple times. At the end of 2024, 2 million people remained internally displaced. A temporary ceasefire in January 2025 brought some desperately needed relief to a civilian population faced with widespread hunger, devastated infrastructure and very limited humanitarian support, but the conflict resumed anew in March 2025.32 In September 2024, the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated across Lebanon, particularly in the south, Bekaa and southern suburbs of Beirut. At the height of the crisis, at least 1.3 million people had been affected by the violence, with nearly a million people displaced within the country (984,500). In late November, an interim ceasefire was agreed and despite ongoing violations, most displaced people were able to return to their areas of residence by the end of the year. By the end of April 2025, despite sporadic conflict and widespread destruction, particularly in the South of Lebanon, the number of people remaining displaced had decreased to 90,000.33 The conflict in Lebanon also affected the predominately Syrian refugee population within the country, who had fled to the country in prior years to seek safety and protection. Nearly 100,000 of them were forced to flee within Lebanon,34 and at least 254,700 Syrians had no option but to return to Syria in adverse circumstances between September and October 2024 alone.35 In 2024, the international armed conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation continued to drive large-scale displacement. During 2024, 740,000 Ukrainians were newly displaced within the country, with 3.7 million remaining internally displaced at endyear. In the eastern and southern parts of the country, the intensity of the fighting increased. An estimated 12.7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance in 2025, as coordinated aerial attacks on civilian infrastructure and energy systems continue to 28 The increase in Libya is due to the arrival in 2024 of a total of 228,800 Sudanese. Almost 30,800 of them were registered as asylum-seekers by UNHCR and the remaining 198,000 are estimated based on the issuance of health cards in areas outside of Tripoli and are reported as people in a refugee-like situation. 29 See Sudan situation, UNHCR. 30 See Haiti: Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan Executive Summary (February 2025), UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). 31 See CORE - Eastern DRC Situation Dashboard - 07 May 2025, UNHCR. 32 See Gaza: ‘Dramatic escalation’ as bombardments intensify and displacement surges, UN News. 33 See Lebanon Mobility Snapshot, Round 86, IOM. 34 See Protection Monitoring Findings in Lebanon, Q4 2024, UNHCR. 35 Operational estimates are higher with 557,000 people estimated to have fled Lebanon to Syria, 63 per cent of whom were Syrian. See Middle East Situation, 25 Nov 2024, UNHCR. UNHCR > GLOBAL TRENDS 2024 9